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Reflections
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 One component of healthy aging is maintaining your independence. What does it mean to you to stay independent? It might include staying in the home you love as you age. It might mean doing the things you love: whether that’s hiking, biking, horseback riding, traveling, gardening, playing with grandkids, or even fighting for causes you are passionate about. What else do you want to keep doing? In their book Yoga for Healthy Aging, Bell & Zolotow list four essential skills for maintaining independence as we age: strength, flexibility, balance, and agility. Are you engaging in activities that build or maintain these skills? If so, that is something to celebrate! Whether or not you are, you might consider yoga to build and maintain these skills, in a holistic way. For instance, many of the poses build strength, flexibility, and balance all at the same time. An example is Warrior 1, shown here. And by slowly moving in and out of the pose before staying in the pose, we can build agility. By the way, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be flexible to start a yoga practice. You can do yoga to build flexibility. And much more. If you are interested in learning more about healthy aging and how yoga can support you, there’s still time to register for my workshop this Sunday: Healthy Aging through a Yoga Lens. Here’s to your healthy aging!  This is my great-grandmother, Anna Christina Jansdottir Pil Olson. She immigrated here from Sweden at age 21 with her mother and siblings, a few years after her father Jan died in a blizzard in a Swedish forest. Anna Christina (“Annie”) married, had two children (one of whom died at age 16), a couple husbands, a farm, and a long life. She died at age 91.
I’ve heard a lot recently about “intergenerational trauma,” and how our body stores trauma experienced by our ancestors. That idea led me to invite my family members, descendants of Annie Olson, to gather via Zoom and talk about how she lived her life. Annie had her share of trauma but also happiness. Clearly, she had some secrets to healthy aging and resilience, even if it wasn’t something she “worked at.” She was active and engaged. As I prepare for my workshop on June 13th, “Healthy Aging through a Yoga Lens,” I’ve been researching some of the factors in aging. What is genetic and what is “epigenetic”? (epi = “on top of” or “in addition to”). Can we be agents in our healthy aging, through mindset and actions? So I’m thinking about the genes I inherited from Annie Olson, but also the mindset and attitudes I may have inherited. And how I fit into the long line of humans that are behind and ahead of me. What my legacy will be and what healthy aging has to do with that. My daughter Katie recently gave me a book called The Good Ancestor, by Roman Krznaric. Here’s a quote that I have found meaningful in this context: “A legacy is not something that we leave but something we grow throughout our lives. It is not just a bequest written into a will, but a daily practice.” Join me for this workshop as we explore what it might mean to age well and how a slow, mindful yoga practice could support you.  Today (Sunday, June 6) is National Cancer Survivors Day. Here’s a clipping from my cancer scrapbook which shows me at the Southern Oregon NCSD in 2002, as a 2-year survivor of cancer.
Back then, I didn’t have a yoga practice. I did some breathing to relax during tests and treatments, and it was very helpful, but I didn’t really understand the power of a breath practice. I have now lived over 21 years as a cancer survivor. Many things have contributed to my feelings of wellness and gratitude since that year of diagnosis, surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. One of the most important has been the incorporation of yoga into my life. The benefits of yoga are far greater than I could have imagined when I began my practice in 2009. I has provided me with some tools that I can carry forward into the next decades of my life. It can help you, too! One of the fundamental tools of yoga is pranayama – breath awareness and control. The breath is a fascinating tool, as it is both voluntary and involuntary. This means we can bring our awareness to it and even control it, but if we don’t, it will still work. If you sit in a resting position and just become still, your breath will naturally flow in and out of your lungs. On the other hand, you can (for example) intentionally inhale slowly, pause, and exhale slowly. Our ability to control our breath is a powerful mechanism for focusing our attention, calming our mind, relaxing our body, relieving anxiety, and more. And it turns out that if you can breathe, you have a yoga body, so anyone can have a yoga practice – including cancer survivors. And if you’re not a survivor of cancer, all of the above still applies. Breathe in slowly…….breathe out slowly…….. P.S. A cancer survivor is anyone living with a history of cancer, from the moment of diagnosis through the rest of your life. |